How the panic over right-wing violence is being used to marginalize peaceful dissent

When panicky centrists aren't willing to draw an unbroken line from peaceful conservatives to the violent fringe, they posit a somewhat subtler link. The killers, they acknowledge, aren't taking their marching orders directly from Fox News and AM radio. But by giving serious attention to theories associated with the fringe right—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing concentration camps, that Barack Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen—Glenn Beck and other broadcasters are validating the grievances of potential killers, giving them the impression that they aren't alone. This validation is buttressed by the sweeping, sometimes violent rhetoric about "liberals" that you hear from partisan celebrities, such as Ann Coulter's joke that McVeigh should have blown up the New York Times building instead. In The Eliminationists and on his blog, David Neiwert tries to establish a chain linking "eliminationist" behavior in American history (lynchings of blacks and Asians, the slaughter of American Indians), eliminationist rhetoric on the mainstream right (the Coulter wisecrack), and von Brunn–style efforts to eliminate people directly.

The theory is interesting, but it has two enormous problems. The first is that it ignores the autonomy of people on the fringe. Not just the radicals who commit the crimes, but the radicals who don't commit crimes. There's a complex ecology at work here, one demonstrated most clearly in those cases when militiamen alerted authorities to terrorist plots in their midst. Words have influence, but they influence different people in different ways; you can't reduce media effects to simple push-pull reactions. Accusing Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly of validating right-wing violence isn't so different from accusing pornography of validating rape, Ozzy Osbourne of validating teen suicide, or Marilyn Manson of validating school massacres.

Monday, March 29, 2010

[Human Rights Watch] is an association that is all about influence — an influence that depends on a carefully honed image of objectivity, expertise and high moral tone. So it was perhaps a little awkward that a key member of staff was found to have such a treasure trove of Nazi regalia.

But, unlike Khrushchev, Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize winner, no less, was keeping count — in the autumn of 1933 he is recorded as having told the British Embassy that ten million had died. ** "The Ukraine," he said, "had been bled white," remarkable words from the journalist who had, only days earlier, described talk of a famine as "a sheer absurdity," remarkable words from the journalist who, in a 1935 memoir had dismayingly little to say about one of history's greatest crimes. Writing about his two visits to the Ukraine in 1933, Duranty was content to describe how "the people looked healthier and more cheerful than [he] had expected, although they told grim tales of their sufferings in the past two years." As Duranty had explained (writing about his trip to the Ukraine in April that year), he "had no doubt that the solution to the agrarian problem had been found".

Thursday, March 25, 2010

He is a good and energetic man, and has, in the years since he left service at the White House, dedicated himself to being what I call a “polite-company conservative” (or PCC), much like David Brooks and Sam Tanenhaus at the New York Times (where the precocious Ross Douthat is shaping up to be a baby version of the species). A PCC is a conservative who yearns for the goodwill of the liberal elite in the media and in the Beltway—who wishes, always, to have their ear, to be at their dinner parties, to be comforted by a sense that liberal interlocutors believe that they are not like other conservatives, with their intolerance and boorishness, their shrillness and their talk radio. The PCC, in fact, distinguishes himself from other conservatives not so much ideologically—though there is an element of that—as aesthetically.

I have a somewhat different take on Frum. I notice that Frum is not actually terribly policy-oriented or policy-informed. He is not a wonk. Or, if it is, he seems to hide it well enough on his blog. I don't see a lot of deep policy analysis on his site.

Frum, of course, is constantly castigating conservatives like Limbaugh for supposedly-simplistic thinking, sloganeering, etc. Not doing their homework. Not pouring over the policy details and arriving at a good policy position, but instead preferring easier, gut-level attitudinal posturing.

The thing is -- That's all that Frum does, too. He may criticize Limbaugh for simplifying arguments into easy-to-repeat gut-level impulses and attitudes, rather than going into great detail about policy, but that's all Frum does, too. Except instead of copping one attitude -- "Don't negotiate; stay firm; remain true to principles" -- he cops the opposite attitude -- "Always negotiate; stay flexible; compromise on principles."

But because his attitude is viewed more favorably by the liberal retardentsia whose approval he so craves, he deems that his attitude is the more sophisticated and intellectualized one.

The recent Tea Parties really put the lie to Frum’s posturing. By all rights, he should love this essentially libertarian grass roots movement. His great bugaboo--the Religious Right--is not driving the movement. The Tea Parties focus on economics not the social issues that Frum detests.

But Frum is luke warm. Fox News jumped on the board the bandwagon, you see. The people at MSNBC and CNN are making fun of the demonstrators. People might think that David Frum a dork like Sean Hannity if he supports the Tea Parties.

That really is the bottom line with Frum. He cares a lot about what the right people think.

Not Right as in conservative. Not Right as in correct. No, right as in popular in the cool circles and cool in the popular circles.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The state of California is losing billions of dollars keeping hundreds of prisoners on death row -- but the ultimate punishment is mostly symbolic in the state, where inmates ply the appeals process for decade after decade and are more likely to die of old age than by execution.

It seems that California has created a perverse system of capital punishment appeals. It let's a monster like Richard Ramirez spend decades on death row. At the same time, a truly innocent man is likely to spend decades on death row.

By law, every death sentence in California has to be appealed and reviewed by the state's Supreme Court to ensure that no one who is innocent faces the ultimate penalty.

It is a slow process that begins with a very long delay. According to Minsker and other experts, it generally takes as many as five years after a conviction before a lawyer is even appointed to file a mandatory appeal. "Nothing happens in those five years," she said. The reason, according to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a panel appointed to look at the state's death penalty system, is that there are just too few experienced lawyers available to handle the growing number of appeals.

Amazing! It turns out that putting people through "training" modeled on political indoctrination programs in dictatorships is productivity-draining make-work for a subset of the political class. Fortunately, it impairs its own stated objectives, thus creating more "demand" for the political class' "work."

Monday, March 22, 2010

The question conservatives should be asking though, is how did we get in this position in the first place? How come, over the course of two elections, Democrats were able to take back the White House and amass substantial majorities in both chambers of Congress, allowing them to enact this sweeping legislation with no Republican votes – and huge defections in their own party? How could a generally right-of-center nation be taken over by liberals from Chicago and San Francisco?

The answer, of course, is that none of this would have been possible without George W. Bush -- or more broadly speaking, Bush era Republicanism. While they were in power, Republicans squandered an opportunity to push free market health care solutions. When they did use their power to pass major legislation, it was for policies like the big government Medicare prescription drug plan, which was (until today) the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society. They took earmarks and doled out farm and energy subsidies. They earned a reputation for fiscal recklessness and corruption and incompetent governance. President Obama ultimately forced through the health care bill in spite of the political consequences to his party because he’s ultimately a true believing liberal. But it was only because of the failures of Bush-era Republicanism that an ideological liberal with little experience was able to capture the presidency on the abstract notion of change.

UPDATE: Klein left out maybe the biggest Bush failure of all: his inept handling of the two wars he launched but did not win.

UPDATE (3/24): Stand by your man was a great song; it is lousy politics.

Many of the comments at Am Spec and TOM attack Klein for criticizing Bush. I don't know which worries me more: the whiff of totalitarian party-lining implicit in the idea that true conservatives must only attack liberals and never Republicans or mounting evidence that for most commenters the 'net brings out their inner idiot. (Fortunately, the only commenters i have are reasonable or spam-bots. I delete the latter and appreciate the former so read what CJinPA wrote on this post.)

If conservatives and free-marketers don't criticize the Bush/Rove record, then three bad things happen. One, we look like hypocrites when we criticize liberals and Democrats. Two, the Bush years (and their disasters) get chalked up conservative ideas. Who could be surprised if the public was less than eager for a repeat. Three, Bushites end up appearing on TV as conservative spokesmen and get their heads handed to them.

Karl Rove appeared on ABC's This Week with a chart full of facts about the Obama health care bill and what it would do to the U.S. economy. Obama political consultant David Plouffe appeared with several humorous talking points provided him by the White House.

"We wanted him to be ready," says a White House communications aide. When Rove raised the issue of the damage the health care bill would cause the U.S. economy, Plouffe jumped in, saying, "Karl and the Republicans would be familiar with that. Under their leadership, they took us from big budget surpluses to a $1.3 trillion deficit."

Later, he used the line: "Karl and the Republicans have zero credibility -- about as much credibility as the country of Greece does to talk about fiscal responsibility."

Rove may have had the facts on his side but television is all about soundbites. Right now, any Democrat will win the soundbite battle if the issue is economics and his opponent made his bones serving Bush II.

Ohio, a team that had posted a losing record in its Mid American Conference, snuck into the Big Dance by putting together a four-game conference tournament championship run.

And on Thursday, the suddenly unstoppable Bobcats seemed a step quicker than the Hoyas on offense and defense all night. The Hoyas had no answer for two Bobcats guards who delivered a couple of steely-eyed Big Dance performances that will be talked about for years.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

As the Pittsburgh Pirates embark on the team's 50th Anniversary celebratory season of its historic 1960 World Series triumph over the New York Yankees, fans have good reason to reach back in time to when the Buccos were truly great.

For too many fans, a 17-year sub-.500 Pirate record has blotted out the Bucco's rich history.

The place to begin your review of the early Pirates is a wonderful new book by James Forr and David Proctor, "Pie Traynor: A Baseball Biography"

The book naturally focuses on Traynor and his sixteen-year Hall of Fame playing career from 1920 to 1937 (BA: .320) during which time he was widely considered to be baseball's best third baseman. The honor was officially bestowed on him in 1969 when Traynor was voted as the third baseman on baseball's all-time team.

In most of Traynor's Pirate seasons the team contended for the National League pennant.

An extraordinarily skilled fielder and a great hitter, Traynor once drove in more than 100 runs in five consecutive seasons (1927-1931). The only other third baseman to match that feat is the Atlanta Braves' Chipper Jones. I'll save you the trouble of looking it up. Neither 500 home run sluggers Eddie Matthews nor Mike Schmidt did it.

Forr and Proctor also devote chapters to Traynor's post-playing years as the Pirates manager, an evening sports talk show host and an announcer for the old "Studio Wrestling" program back in the days when wrestling was more or less legitimate.

Traynor was a widely recognized and beloved figure in Pittsburgh. Since he never learned to drive, Traynor walked everywhere and was more than willing to stop and chat with his admiring fans. Unlike many of today's stars, Traynor never turned down a request to appear at a youth group or address a charitable organization.

The book is rich with Pirate history that will fascinate even the most casual fan.

Here are two examples:

-- For years, some baseball analysts claim that when the Pirates met the New York Yankees in the 1927 World Series, the Bucs were so overwhelmed when they watched "Murderer's Row" take batting practice that they knew they would lose and played accordingly.

Traynor debunks that theory completely. According to Traynor, the Pirates took batting practice first and never even watched the Yankees warm up.

Lloyd Waner, Traynor's Hall of Fame teammate, confirms it. According to Waner: "We had our workout first and I...was just leaving the field as they were coming onto the field."

--- In 1938, when Traynor was manager and the team badly needed pitchers and catchers, Chester Washington of the black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier sent Traynor the following telegram: "KNOW YOUR CLUB NEEDS PLAYERS STOP HAVE ANSWER TO YOUR PRAYERS RIGHT HERE IN PITTSBURGH STOP JOSH GIBSON CATCHER FIRST BASE B. LEONARD AND RAY BROWN PITCHER OF HOMESTEAD GRAYS AND S. PAIGE PITCHER COOL PAPA BELL OF PITTSBURGH CRAWFORDS. ALL AVAILABLE AT REASONABLE FIGURES STOP WOULD MAKE PIRATES FORMIDABLE PENNANT CONTENDERS STOP WHAT IS YOUR ATTITUDE? STOP WIRE ANSWER"

Years later, that Traynor never answered Washington puzzles many especially since if the Pirates had acquired Gibson, Leonard, Bell and Paige they likely would have run off a string of World Championships.

But in retrospect, the consensus is that Traynor's silence was not motivated by racism but that he acting individually did not have the authority from the Pirates' administration to integrate baseball.

Not quite a decade later, when Traynor was working as a sportscaster, he urged the Pirates to follow the lead of the Brooklyn Dodgers and sign black players.

What I also enjoy about Forr and Proctor's book is the insight into less well known early Buccos who had enormously productive careers.

Have you ever heard of Lee Meadows? In addition to being the first major league player to wear eye glasses, Meadows was the fastest working pitcher ever to take to the mound. In 1919, as a Philadelphia Phillie, Meadows was the 6-1 loser in a 51 minute complete game (!) against the New York Giants. Meadows anchored the Buc's staff from 1924 to 1928 when he won 20 games once and 19 games twice.

Did you ever wonder how Trayner's Hall of Fame teammate Hazen Shirley Cuyler became known as "Kiki"? Some think it was because of his slight speech impediment that often made it difficult for Cuyler to pronounce his name completely on his first attempt.

Others say that Cuyler was such an outstanding outfielder that players would call "Ki, Ki" for any fly ball within his reach.

How about the left-handed Cy Blanton who debuted for the Pirates in 1935 and after two and a half weeks had a 4-0 record with a 0.75 ERA. By the season's end, Blanton was 18-4 and led the league in ERA with 2.58.

Banton's story ends sadly, however. He never matched his early success and after being traded to the Phillies, was released in 1942. In 1945, Blanton died in a mental institution.

"Pie Traynor: A Baseball Biography" is the first comprehensive study of Traynor's career. And the book offers many interesting and amusing anecdotes about the great Pirate teams and players from those wonderful days gone by.

The Department of Justice and the FBI think the anthrax letters case is now closed. Dr. Meryl Nass disagrees. She has posted a series of valuable questions and rebuttals to the FBI's case against Dr. Bruce Ivins.

Actually, the 96 page FBI report is predicated on the assumption that the anthrax letters attack was carried out by a "lone nut." The FBI report fails to entertain the possibility that the letters attack could have involved more than one actor. The FBI admits that about 400 people may have had access to Ivins' RMR-1029 anthrax preparation, but asserts all were "ruled out" as lone perpetrators. FBI never tried to rule any out as part of a conspiracy, however.

That strikes me as a serious blindspot in an eight year investigation.

The point, as one scientist specializing in fine particle chemistry told me, blows a large hole through the 92-page summary of the investigation released last week by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, the main conclusion of which is that Bruce E. Ivins, a scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, in Maryland, was the anthrax mailer.

“Note that the proprietary azeotropic drying technique and the pneumatic mill are both superspecialized pieces of equipment, neither of which is at Detrick,” the specialist in fine particles, Stuart Jacobsen, said in an e-mail message.

But the F.B.I.’s entire case against Mr. Ivins is that he was able to manufacture the anthrax used in the attacks at his Fort Detrick lab, working late at night on the days before the actual anthrax mailings so nobody would see what he was doing.

In the aftermath of the FBI report, Ivins "therapist" hit the media trail with tales of the evil Bruce Ivins and his twisted psyche:

Remember, Duley had only just received a Bachelors Degree when she was put in the position of counselling Ivins for substance abuse. She has neither the training nor experience to comment to the media on Ivins' psychological pathologies, let alone treat them. She was not qualified to do anything more than substance abuse work, and as someone who had fallen off the wagon, was not even qualified for that.

Nass also notes that Duley is the only medical professional to come forward with these tales.

Amanda Knox was not convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher because she did cartwheels in the police station or owned a vibrator, as her supporters suggest., Knox, 22, along with her 25-year-old former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty by a jury in Perugia, Italy, based on hard forensic evidence, according to the sentencing judge’s 427-page reasoning, which was issued Thursday and obtained by The Daily Beast. The two judges and six jury members for the 11-month trial agreed with the prosecution’s case, calling it a “comprehensive and complete picture without gaps and inconsistencies.

[The jury] convicted her unanimously, the disagreement was only on whether or not to give her a life sentence. “A life sentence would have been a death penalty,” one juror said. “They were too young and there was no motivation for the murder.” Still, they believed wholeheartedly that she was involved. They valued the forensic evidence that Amanda’s parents say does not exist. They wondered why Amanda’s DNA and Meredith’s blood was wiped away and recovered with Luminol. They thought it was Raffaele’s bloody footprint on the bathroom rug and his DNA on Meredith’s bra clasp. They believed the prosecutor’s testimony that Meredith’s DNA was on the blade of the knife that had Amanda’s DNA on the handle. They had the forensic evidence they needed to tie her to the murder, they said in off-the-record interviews after the hearing. They believed that if she did not kill her, she knew enough about who did to warrant the conviction. The inconsistencies in Knox’s story were too many. Her lack of corroborated alibi just too much to overlook. How Amanda explained these same things to her parents is a well-kept secret. “She says she wasn’t there,” her father claims. “We just know she wasn’t there.”

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, is negotiating to add a television job to his schedule. He is in final talks to be the co-host of a new PBS Friday night public affairs series called “Need to Know,” said several executives with knowledge of the production who declined to be named because the contracts had not been signed.

The co-anchor for the program, which begins May 7 at 8:30 p.m., is expected to be Alison Stewart, formerly of NPR’s short-lived “The Bryant Park Project” morning show and, before that, anchor of MSNBC’s “The Most.”

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Over at Volokh they decry the the attacks on the DOJ officials who once represented al-Qaeda detainees:

These attacks are not only wrong, but short-sighted as well. Nominees and appointees in Republican adminsitrations are routinely attacked for having represented politically unpopular clients. Suggesting that attorneys who performed pro bono work for detainees necessarily share the political sympathies of their clients is scurrilous — and no more grounded than claims that an attoreny who represented an oil company or accused white-collar criminal approves of his or her client’s conduct. Everyone is entitled to vigorous representation, even those accused of polluting our environment or planning to attack our nation.

A final note: There’s perhaps some irony that Peter Keisler is defending Obama Administration nominees from such attacks, when he himself was subject to scurrilous attacks when he was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. More evidence Keisler is more honorable than those who kept him off the bench.

A commenter, though, makes the critical point and takes the match:

All probably true.

But note that, while maintaining that honor, Peter Keisler is “Mr. Keisler” and not “Judge Keisler.” And the allegedly dishonorable people who kept him that way are running the country.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias sought to blunt a potentially damaging political issue today about questions regarding his involvement in his family’s struggling bank, which he said he expects will likely fail in the coming months.

His family pulls $70 million out of the bank in 2007 and 2008. Now it looks like it will fail at great cost to the FDIC. And he thinks Illinois should send him to Washington.

Oh yeah, his family business helped bankroll Tony Rezko and made loans to Michael “Jaws” Giorango,, a bookmaker and pimp.

NEW YORK — Republican strategist Karl Rove says in a new memoir that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq badly damaged the Bush administration's credibility and led to dwindling public support for the war.

The former White House political adviser blames himself for not pushing back against claims that President George W. Bush had taken the country to war under false pretenses, calling it one of the worst mistakes he made during the Bush presidency. The president, he adds, did not knowingly mislead the American public about the existence of such weapons.

Gee, ya' think?

The "Bush lied, people died" meme pollutes the public debate on the Iraq War. Now it finally dawns on Karl Rove that the White House should have pushed back against that libel. Truly Rove is one of the great minds of his generation.

By the appraisal of any normal mind, there can be little doubt that William Edward Hickman was a vicious psychopath of the worst order. That Ayn Rand saw something heroic, brilliant, and romantic in this despicable creature is perhaps the single worst indictment of her that I have come across. It is enough to make me question not only her judgment, but her sanity.

Nonetheless, people such as Ayn Rand—and the nerds and geeks who cling to her in the naive belief that her rotten novels will turn them into supermen—could never understand the fact that human beings are social animals.

Prescott blames Nietzsche's influence for Rand's disturbing fondness for sick killers. That is, at best, only a partial explanation. No one who took Nietzsche seriously could create Objectivism:

The will to a system is a lack of integrity.
(Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols)

As is usually the case, Chesterton had the best response to the bad parts of Nietzsche and his dime-store disciples:

Fastidiousness is the most pardonable of of vices; but it is the most unpardonable of virtues. Nietzsche, who represents most prominently this pretentious claim of the fastidious, has a description somewhere-- a very powerful description in a purely literary sense-- of the disgust and disdain which consume him at the sight of the common people with their common faces, common voices, and their common minds. As I have said, this attitude is almost beautiful if we may regard it as pathetic. Nietzsche's aristocracy has about it all the sacredness that belongs to the weak. When he makes us feel that he cannot endure the innumerable faces, the incessant voices, the overpowering omnipresence which belongs to the mob, he will have the sympathy of anybody who has ever been sick on a steamer or tired in a crowded omnibus. Every man has hated mankind when he was less than a man. Every man has had humanity in his eyes like a blinding fog, humanity in his nostrils like a suffocating smell. But when Nietzsche has the incredible lack of humour and lack of imagination to ask us to believe that his aristocracy is an aristocracy of strong muscles or an aristocracy of strong wills, it is necessary to point out the truth. It is an aristocracy of weak nerves.

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"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams